


if i smile with my teeth

by Anonymous



Category: Age of Madness - Joe Abercrombie, The First Law - Joe Abercrombie
Genre: Coda, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-07 22:19:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20824721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It wasn't that he didn't love his legitimate children.





	if i smile with my teeth

It wasn't that he didn't love his legitimate children. Carlot and Cathil were lovely girls, charming and accomplished and yet loving too. Cathil was pregnant with her first child, per her last letter. She would make a wonderful mother, Jezal was sure. And Orso, well. He loved Orso too, but was afraid that he'd see his own mistakes staring back at him from his son's face. Orso couldn't please Terez either, it seemed. He wondered what she'd been thinking, naming their first--their only--son after a father she'd railed against for years, and then wouldn't hear a word against once he was dead.

Still, Terez did love Orso. And Jezal loved him too. He wanted the boy to be happy; gods knew he'd be miserable enough when it was his time to be king. Of course, he wasn't a boy, he was seven and twenty already, and that was, well, that might have been a problem. Certainly Terez thought so. 

Savine, on the other hand. Savine was an adult at an early age, coolly assessing others, moving towards her goals--_having_ goals, by the gods. Knowing what they were, and how to achieve them. She played the game of high society to perfection. She was an unqualified success. She was the most feared woman in Adua. 

And yet that wasn't why Jezal loved her. That wasn't why, when Glotka told him his daughter--Glotka's, not Jezal's, not that that was much of a lie, not that he could ever contest it if he wanted her to stay safe, and happy--was in Valbeck when the mob seized control, his heart froze in sudden terror. It wasn't why he'd found himself lost whenever they came across one another socially, wasn't why it hurt him to see her and yet he sought her out, every time. Perhaps it was that in looking at her, he saw an alternate life in which he had not become king, in which he had married Ardee after all. Where Savine would in truth be his daughter--

But then she wouldn't be Savine, he knew. There were things she'd learned from Sand dan Glotka that she wouldn't have from Ardee, and certainly not from Jezal. She might have been something completely different--and yet Jezal would have loved her, he had to be sure of that. Because otherwise he would have wondered if he loved his firstborn so much simply because she was the one he hadn't had to raise, hadn't had the chance to ruin.

She ran from him, that night. She seemed sick, and sad, and furious. Jezal wondered if Ardee had told her--and if she had, why. He could not blame Savine. He knew he was a coward. He knew he should have done right by her. And he knew that he'd placed himself in a situation where he was worse than helpless. 

Still, at least he'd got her back from Valbeck. Still, at least Orso had made a name for himself. Still, at least his other daughters were beyond the criticisms of their mother, ruling their own domains and becoming their own women, day by day. Still, he'd warned Orso against Bayaz. If nothing else, he'd warned Orso against Bayaz. He wasn't a complete failure of a father.

Still, if he was going to die--

He wished she might have spoken to him, just a little longer. He wished he might have said something to her, father to daughter. He wished he might have asked her to help Orso, who would need all the help he could get. 

But there was no more time to wish things had gone differently. There was no time at all.


End file.
